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This paper will outline the results of a study performed to analyze the market introduction of x-by-wire applications in the context of weak global industry environment, technological and legislative challenges, standardization issues and end customer benefits. This paper attempts to provide a bird-view on influence factors and impacts for the x-by-wire market, including e.g. the end customer's acceptance and legal environment driving further development in specific areas. Further, major driving forces on semiconductor/component level will be outlined regarding e.g. pin-count, computation performance and heat dissipation, but also possible scenarios and solutions towards safe and efficient system design and partitioning.

Automotive powertrain and safety systems under design today are highly complex, incorporating more than one CPU core, running with more than 100 MHz and consisting of several 10 million transistors. Software complexity increases similarly making new methodologies and tools mandatory to manage the overall system. The use of accurate virtual prototypes improves the quality of systems with respect to system architecture design and software development. This approach is demonstrated with the example of the PCP/GPTA subsystem for Infineon's AUDO-NG powertrain controllers.

The following paper aims to bring the topics of connected testing and emission measurements together. It is an introduction of connected bench testing with the aim to characterize brake particle emissions with a special focus on the impact of regenerative braking by simulating the real behavior of a premium BEV SUV. Such an approach combines the advantages of a brake dynamometer including an emission testing setup and a HiL setup to allow a much more precise testing of brake particle emissions under the impact of regen braking compared to the current recommendations of the Global Technical Regulation (GTR) on brake particle emissions. It is shown for the very first time, how interactions between the vehicle motion system work. The study includes one physical front brake corner as well as one physical rear brake corner. The regen functionalities are simulated by a real ESC-ECU which is the core of the HiL test setup.

This paper will describe different types of short circuit conditions, how they affect power semiconductor devices, and how to detect and safely mitigate the event.

Electrified vehicles are particularly quiet, especially at low speeds due to the absence of combustion noises. This is why there are laws worldwide for artificial driving sounds to warn pedestrians. These sounds are generated using a so-called Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS) which must maintain certain minimum sound pressure levels in specific frequency ranges at low speeds. The creation of the sound currently involves an iterative and sometimes time-consuming process that combines composing the sound on a computer with measuring the levels with a car on an outside noise test track. This continues until both the legal requirements and the subjective demands of vehicle manufacturers are met. To optimize this process and reduce the measurement effort on the outside noise test track, the goal is to replace the measurement with a simulation for a significant portion of the development.

Automotive applications classed as safety-related or safety-critical are now important differentiating technologies in the automotive industry. The emergence of safety standard ISO 26262 underlines the increasing importance of safety in automotive software. As well as functional requirements, hard real-time requirements are of crucial importance to safety-related software as there is a need to prove that the system functionality is fulfilled, even in worst-case scenarios. Measurement-based WCET (Worst-Case Execution Time) analysis combines on-target timing measurements with static analysis of program structure to calculate predicted worst-case paths and times. This is in contrast to traditional end-to-end timing measurements, which give no confidence that the worst-case path is actually tested and no insight into the location of any timing problems that do emerge.

Integration scenarios for ECU software become more complicated, as more constraints with regards to timing, safety and security need to be considered. Multi-core microcontrollers offer even more hardware potential for integration scenarios. To tackle the complexity, more and more model based approaches are used. Understanding the interaction between the different software components, not only from a functional but also from a timing view, is a key success factor for high integration scenarios. In particular for multi-core systems, an amazing amount of timing data can be generated. Usually a multi-core system handles more software functionality than a single-core system. Furthermore, there may be timing interference on the multicore systems, due to the shared usage of buses, memory banks or other hardware resources.

Future applications in the automotive domain such as distributed control functions need a highly dependable communication system. The current FlexRay standard already provides high transmission speeds and addresses deterministic data communication. This paper shows how to enhance the safety properties for handling a new set of applications and speeding up the communication even more. The concept of Layered FlexRay is based on the FlexRay protocol and addresses the requirements of safety-relevant applications in a distributed communication network. An implementation of this approach is depicted with a Safety Core hardware chip. It is designed to handle the communication between the FlexRay system beneath and the application on the host CPU above, providing highly efficient data management and execution of safety functions which otherwise would have to be executed in software on the host CPU.

In Engine Management System, more accurate control is required to improve engine performance. Especially generating the precise ignition signal has a direct effect on better engine performance. In the beginning of this paper, a basic software structure to synchronize the engine crank signal and generate ignition signals will be explained. Several cases which can generate dwell timing error will be introduced based on this software structure. In addition, each impact level for each error case will be described. For cases of major error, compensation ways will be proposed in order to obtain more accurate dwell timing. The compensation ways by both microcontroller hardware and user software will be explained in detail. In conclusion, this paper will show the accuracy of ignition signal which implements proposed compensation ways that can be improved as compared to conventional ignition signal.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers whose performance can no longer be measured in MIPS. Instead, their effectiveness is based on a coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, what the designer needs are benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment. This presentation will explore the role of new benchmarks in the development of complex automotive applications.

More than ever, microcontroller performance in cars has a direct impact on the driving experience, on compliance with improved safety, ever-stricter emissions regulations, and on fuel economy. The simple microcontrollers formerly used in automobiles are now being replaced by powerful number-crunchers with incredible levels of peripheral integration. As a result, performance can no longer be measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second). A microcontroller's effectiveness is based on coherent partitioning between analog and digital, hardware and software, tools and methodology. To make an informed choice among the available devices, the designer needs benchmarks that are specific to automotive applications, and which provide a realistic representation of how the device will perform in the automotive environment.

This paper outlines the results of a study performed to analyze the mission of TTCAN from applications to products for automotive systems. As commonly acknowledged communication is one of the key elements for future and even present systems such as an automobile. A dramatically increasing number of busses and gateways even in low- to midrange vehicles is putting significant burden upon the validation scenario as well as the cost. Accordingly, numerous new initiatives have been started worldwide in order to find solutions to this; some of them by the definition of enhanced or new protocols. This paper shall have a look particular on the new standard of TTCAN (time-triggered communication on CAN). This protocol is based on the CAN data link layer as specified in ISO 11898-1 and may use standardized CAN physical layers such as specified in ISO 11898-2 (high-speed transceiver) or in ISO 11898-3 (fault-tolerant low-speed transceiver).

In defining innovative and cost-effective chip sets for future automotive applications, system architects need high-level tools that allow them to rapidly determine the best silicon partitioning for a given application in terms of system performance as well as cost. The tool needs to be flexible, modular, and swift such that the system designer can perform abstract simulation iterations quickly for various functional partitioning scenarios, without requiring excessive computer resources. The tool must also be portable and adaptable to provide a simulation environment suitable to systems- or car-manufacturers for in-depth applications simulation and architecture assessment. The semiconductor component definition process using such a “mission-level” design tool for the automotive application electronic valve will be demonstrated. Methods for the analysis of electronic valve control system architectures using mission-level simulation will be developed.

Trans Tech recently debuted the all-electric eTrans school bus providing a total zero emission school bus. The presentation will demonstrate Smith Electric Vehicles and their history with electric vehicles. The presentation will help ensure that everybody has an idea of what the electric school bus will do and to dispel any rumors about the vehicle. Presenter Brian S. Barrington, Trans Tech. Bus

The amount of electronics in vehicles is increasing, so is the amount of power electronics circuits, like inverters for electric motor drives or dc/dc converters. The muscles of these circuits are power transistors like MOSFETs and IGBTs - in each circuit are several of them. While MOSFETs and IGBTs have advanced over the years in terms of their performance, their wide product spectrum and feature spectrum as well as cost, they are still not unbreakable, but semiconductors which are more sensitive to electrical or thermal overstress than, a relay for instance. Especially electrical overstress, like overvoltage or over current, may damage a power transistor within a short time frame. Hence, electrical overstress must be avoided when designing the power electronics circuit. However, even a power transistor in a carefully designed power electronics circuit, may still be exposed to over current, short circuit, over voltage, over temperature and so forth.

Lightweighting of cars will remain one important goal for car producers. One milestone for lightweight technologies was the Audi Space Frame ASF‚. New generations of ASF cars will follow. Only the experience from the A 8 shows, which innovative technologies for these new generations will bring us one step forward. It's the combination of alloy modifications, innovative forming and joining technologies that leads into the future.

The term X-by-Wire is commonly used in the automotive industry to describe the notion of replacing current mechanical or hydraulic chassis and powertrain systems with pure electro-mechanical systems. The paper describes the current trends and the architecture of future chassis electronics systems. The first part of the paper covers the systems architecture of x-by-wire electronics systems. We describe the network and the software architecture in more detail. The paper also explains some of the software components, in particular the operating system and the communication layer. The second part of the paper gives a description of the current state of the development process for software intended for safety-relevant systems. A possible tool chain for this development process, current possibilities as well as limitations and challenges are described.

More electronic vehicle functions lead to an exponentially growing degree of software integration in automotive ECUs. We are seeing an increasing number of ECUs with mixed criticality software. ISO26262 describes different safety requirements, including freedom from interference and absence from error propagation for the software. These requirements mandate particular attention for mixed-criticality ECUs. In this paper we investigate the ability to guarantee that these safety requirements will be fulfilled by using established (deadline monitoring) and new error detection mechanisms (execution time monitoring). We also show how these methods can be used to build up safe and efficient schedules for today's and future automotive embedded real time systems with mixed criticality software.

The increasing complexity of automotive electronic systems can only be managed by a higher integration of the modules and a high reliability of the individual electronic devices. That means, the number of electronic components on board will decrease and their complexity will increase. This paper describes how to meet the requirements for the power supply of a 32-bit microcontroller based system in an automotive environment.

In addition to basic switching functionality, smart power switches mainly provide diagnostic and protection functions, e.g. for short circuits to the load, which makes it all the more surprising that short circuit protected smart switches have been used for years in automotive applications without there being a precise definition of a short circuit. This article describes what Infineon has done to fill this gap. It was first necessary to define the kind of short circuits likely to occur in automotive applications and to specify the use and operating points of the smart switches. The next logical step was the standardization of the test circuit and application conditions in the AEC (Automotive Electronics Council) to allow an industry-wide comparison of the test results.